Miami motivated to show it deserved NCAA Tournament berth with strong NIT run

Hurricanes will open with Valparaiso at home Wednesday night

March 14, 2012|By Steve Gorten, Sun Sentinel

CORAL GABLES — — Forward Kenny Kadji compares the past few days for Miami's men's basketball team to a bad breakup with a girlfriend.

"For me, it's tough, because I really feel like we did enough," Kadji said Tuesday. "With everything we've been through, I thought [the NCAA selection committee] would take that into consideration. I really thought we were in. But now we've just got to get ready for the NIT, so I'm trying to move on."

Obsessed for months with making the NCAA Tournament, the Hurricanes are not heading to the Big Dance. Instead, they're on the rebound, poised to start an NIT run during which they hope to show the NCAA Tournament what it could have had.

"We know this is the NIT, but people are going to be watching and we want to prove we're a good team and we deserve to be in the NCAA," Kadji said.

The NIT field is filled with teams that had their NCAA Tournament hopes burst, including Tennessee, the top seed in Miami's region.

The second-seeded 'Canes (19-12) will open with Horizon League regular-season champ and No. 7 seed Valparaiso (22-11) Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at BankUnited Center. Valpo won their only previous meeting, 81-76, in 1956.

The game will be televised on ESPNU.

"It's still great competition because everybody's like, 'OK, since we didn't make the tournament, we've got to prove ourselves here,' " guard Rion Brown said."Everybody comes in with a little chip on their shoulder, which makes it harder."

Beyond proving they deserved an NCAA Tournament at-large berth, the 'Canes' motivation in the NIT will be reaching the semifinals in Madison Square Garden. It would be a homecoming for senior guard Malcolm Grant, who is from Brooklyn, and junior guard Durand Scott and Coach Jim Larranaga, who are from the Bronx.

The 'Canes remain hopeful that Scott, their leading scorer at 12.9 points per game, will be reinstated by the NCAA after being declared ineligible hours before last Friday's ACC quarterfinal loss to Florida State for receiving impermissible benefits.

While center Reggie Johnson's case, a similar matter, was resolved two days after he was declared ineligible, the 'Canes have no idea when the NCAA will render its decision, Larranaga said.

"We've done everything we're supposed to do," he noted. "My understanding is all the information we have that was needed, any questions that needed to be answered, have already been answered."

Larranaga added, "We don't think about it. The only thing I think about is trying to help Durand through it and try to prepare the team to play as well as it can play with or without him."

If Scott isn't cleared in time for tip-off, Brown will start against Valparaiso. The sophomore, who took Scott's place in the lineup against FSU, scored 13 points in his first start of the season.

"I just tried to play my hardest and tried not to let there be a letdown," said Brown, who Kadji calls the team's best perimeter defender. "But, of course, we missed him."

Brown, who started all five postseason games last season, including three in the NIT, has come on strong late in the season for the second consecutive year. He has scored 43 points in the past four games.

Since shooting 5-for-25 (25 percent) in the first nine games of the season, two of which he missed because of illness, Brown is 57-for-123 (46.3 percent), including 32-for-76 (42.1 percent) from 3-point range.

"Early on, I was really struggling," Brown said. "I don't know what was wrong. But as the season went on, I got a lot more confident and felt like the stroke was really coming along. Now I feel like it's here to stay. I just want to keep shooting with confidence and help my team win."

Said Larranaga: "Rion Brown and Trey McKinney Jones have been absolutely terrific. They're like the ingredient that we need to continue to make progress because they play both ends of the court."

Miami will face a Valparaiso team coached by Bryce Drew, famous for the buzzer-beating basket that gave No. 13 seed Valparaiso a first-round upset win against No. 4 Mississippi in the 1998 NCAA Tournament.

Drew, who went on to play with Larranaga's son, Jay, on a professional team in Italy, was named Horizon League Coach of the Year in this, his first season as coach of his alma mater.

The Crusaders, who lost to Detroit 70-50 in the Horizon League Tournament championship game, are led by 6-7 swingman Ryan Broekhoff (14.8 ppg, 8.6 rpg) and 6-8 forward Kevin Van Wijk (14.4 ppg, 5.0 rpg). The team ranked 36th nationally in shooting (47.1 percent), and is perimeter-oriented.

This is Valparaiso's second appearance all-time in the postseason NIT, the other coming nine years ago. It's the third appearance in the past four years for Miami, which lost at Alabama in the NIT quarterfinals last year.

Larranaga, who recalled Tuesday that his final college game as a player was against North Carolina in the NIT at Madison Square Garden, also noted he sees similarities between Miami and the 1979-80 Virginia team for which he was a first-year assistant coach. That Virginia team won the NIT championship. If Miami can do the same, it would ease some of the sting of Sunday.

"We're just playing to show whoever that we did deserve to be in the [NCAA] tournament," Brown said. "If that means running through the NIT trying to beat everybody by 20 and win a championship, then that's what we want to do because everybody was real disappointed about not making it.

"Hey, we still get to play some basketball. A lot of people are just at home doing nothing now. It's still a good opportunity."